$125,000 BOND FOR SOLICITING A CHILD

Saturday, April 30, 2011
—Bond has been set at $125,000 for a man who thought he was soliciting sex acts from a young girl, Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart announced Saturday.

Thomas Twardzik, 24, of the 600 block of Webster in Ottawa, Illinois, has been charged with one count of indecent solicitation of a child.

An undercover investigator with the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Child Exploitation Unit first made contact with Twardzic in a Yahoo chatroom in mid-April. Twardzic told the investigator, who was posing as a 13-year-old female, that he was a 24-year-old man, and they began “chatting” on a regular basis. Over the course of a number of days, Twardzic communicated with the undercover investigator via chat messaging, text messaging and telephone conversations, soliciting sexual acts.

On April 27th, Twardzic made arrangements to meet the undercover officer that day at a predetermined location in Justice, Illinois, and drive to a nearby forest preserve to engage in sex acts in the back of his current girlfriend’s van. When Twardzic arrived at the meeting location, he was immediately taken into custody by Cook County Sheriff’s Police investigators.

Twardzic appeared in Maywood bond court on Friday. His next court date is May 5th, also in Maywood.